The invention is directed to field emission devices. In particular the invention is directed to flat field emission emitters utilizing tunneling and their use in electronic devices.
Several different field emission devices have been proposed and implemented to create electron emissions useful for displays or other electronic devices such as storage devices. Traditionally, vacuum devices with thermionic emission such as electron tubes required the heating of cathode surfaces to create electron emission. The electrons are drawn in a vacuum space to an anode structure that is at a predetermined voltage potential which attracts the electrons. For a display device such as a cathode ray tube, the anode structure is coated with phosphors such that when an electron impinges on the phosphor, photons are generated thereby creating a visible image. Cold cathode devices such as spindt tips (pointed tips) have been used or proposed to replace the hot cathode technology in some applications. However, it has been difficult to reduce the size and integrate several spindt tips while maintaining reliability. As the size is reduced, the spindt tip becomes more susceptible to damage from contaminants in the vacuum that are ionized when an electron strikes it. The ionized contaminant is then attracted to the spindt tip and collides with it, thereby causing damage. To increase the life of the spindt tip, the vacuum space must have an increasingly high vacuum. A flat emitter having a larger emission surface can be operated reliably at lower vacuum requirements. However, for some applications, the amount of current density from conventional flat emitters is not high enough to be useful. Thus a need exists to create a flat emitter that has high-energy current density that is also able to operate reliably in low vacuum environments.
An emitter has an electron supply layer and a tunneling layer formed on the electron supply layer. Optionally, an insulator layer is formed on the electron supply layer and has openings defined within in which the tunneling layer is formed. A cathode layer is formed on the tunneling layer. A conductive layer is partially disposed on the cathode layer and partially on the insulator layer if present. The conductive layer defines an opening to provide a surface for energy emissions of electrons and/or photons. Preferably but optionally, the emitter is subjected to an annealing process thereby increasing the supply of electrons tunneled from the electron supply layer to the cathode layer.